How to read coronavirus news and learn what you actually need to know about staying safe in the pandemic

  With COVID-19, a news story that may be 100% accurate can still unintentionally mislead readers about the greatest threats of the pandemic. The unintended outcome results from a lesson taught to every journalism student: Use “real people” to “humanize” the news.

  The “real person” in COVID-19 stories may be a mom concerned about her child getting sick in the classroom, used as an example in an article about schools reopening. It may be the family member of a person who died from COVID-19 who gives a moving account for a story about the virus’s effects on young adults.

Beyond fact-checking: 5 things schools should do to foster news literacy

  When it comes to news literacy, schools often emphasize fact-checking and hoax-spotting. But as I argue in my new book, schools must go deeper with how they teach the subject if they want to help students thrive in a democratic society.

  As a new poll shows that Americans struggle to know if the information they find online is true, news literacy remains essential in student education.

  Separating fact from fiction is a vital skill for civic engagement, but students can be good fact-checkers only if they have a broader understanding of how news and information are produced and consumed in the digital age. Here are five questions students should be taught to ask.

Dangerous racialization of crime in U.S. news media

  From the start of his presidency, Donald Trump has consistently proven his effectiveness at using fear as a political weapon. At his 2016 inauguration, President Trump claimed that the United States was ridden with poverty and “rampant crime,” vowing to put an end to this “American carnage.” Since then, he has perpetuated false claims that murder rates are rising overall, even though violent crime rates declined in the nation’s largest cities in 2017, continuing the national trend of reduced crime. President Trump has also put unauthorized immigrants at the center of crime by exaggerating the scope and threat of MS-13.

Survey reveals people believe in media as watchdog

  The most encouraging part of the 2018 State of the First Amendment survey is the public’s embrace of the ideal of the media serving as the watchdog of a free society. The American public recognizes the essential importance of a vibrant and free press to serve the interests of the public as a check against government.

  According to the survey, nearly three-fourths of those surveyed (73%) either strongly agreed or somewhat agreed with the statement – “It is important for our democracy that the news media act as a watchdog on government.”

Gene Policinski: No ‘backflips’ in the newsrooms quite yet

  Attention you so-called “enemies of the people”: There’s reason to think fewer people than last year might see you that way, despite the ongoing, politicized attacks from multiple quarters on the news media’s credibility.

  President Donald Trump hurled that “enemies” epithet at journalists earlier this year, complaining about the news coverage of his administration – and of his presidential campaign in 2016. But such criticism comes at varying levels of vitriol from a variety of political quarters, and started long before Trump took office.

Gene Policinski: Who brings us the news? Men, mostly

  Who brings us the news? Mostly it’s still men, according to a new Women’s Media Center study, “Divided 2017.”

  The report says that among the major TV networks, online versions of CNN, Fox, The Huffington Post and The Daily Beast, and the nation’s ten largest newspapers:

    -Male anchors and reporters predominate by about 3 to 1 among broadcast news outlets, which the Center notes is a “regression” from how things used to be. Work by women anchors, field reporters and correspondents actually declined, falling to 25.2 percent of reports in 2016 from 32 percent when the WMC published its 2015 “Divided” report.

Michael Josephson: The Media – Enemies or guardians of democracy

  Is the truth still important? I know I tread dangerous ground inserting myself into the growing conflict between President Trump and the media he has labeled the “enemy of the American people.”  Much wiser and more informed folks than me have responded to this charge which escalated substantially a continuous campaign to discredit news organizations that we have counted on to tell us what’s going on and to hold people in power accountable. The problem is more complicated than it seems, and the stakes are higher than many people realize. To be sure the businessification of major media organizations has blurred the line between news and entertainment.

Gene Policinski: At long last, the stuff of journalism

  The resignation of National Security Adviser Michael Flynn. White House internal disputes that stall policy decisions. Even a mini-crisis involving North Korea.

  At long last: the stuff of journalism.

  After seeming eons of the squishiness of reporting on campaign claims and counter-claims, email investigations that went nowhere, and distractions including faux-home TV shopping pitches, late-night tweets and daytime insults, a free press is now in full-operating mode in the role that the nation’s founders intended: as a watchdog on government.

Gene Policinski: Back to the “basics” in a new way

  There’s no one “key” to why so many believe that journalists missed the rise and election of Donald Trump as president — and that’s a good thing to keep in mind for the future.

  There’s no easy answer to why so many Americans are so critical of the press, so distrustful of news reports and so convinced — particularly post-election — that journalists are out of step and out of touch.

  And yet, a fair amount of speculation in print and on television — including great gobs of gassy talk show speculation — seems focused around ideas that it was Facebook foolishness, retweets of “fake news” or even “the death of facts” that were responsible for Trump’s rise from pre-primary punch line to being president-elect.

Gene Policinski: How much violence do we need to see – or report?

  A tangle of violence and protest has engulfed parts of Baltimore and cannot be ignored by the news media. But how much reporting should be done, and when should it be done, and reports of what?

  Those questions and more swirl, even as smoke still billows over Baltimore amid appeals for calm from the family of Freddie Gray, a 25-year-old man who suffered a spinal cord injury after being arrested by city police.

Gene Policinski: Civility: Let’s try that free-speech option in 2014 in public life

  The First Amendment protects our freedom to say and write just about anything we want — but that doesn’t mean we ought to, particularly in public life.

  The difference rests between "can" and "should."

  Our nation’s Founders were no strangers to rude, callous and raucous debate in public life and to vicious commentary, even by today’s "anything goes" online standards. Sex scandals, infidelity, personal weaknesses and even religious differences were exposed, debated and mocked in public life and in the newspapers of the day with personal glee and political purpose.

Eric Alterman: The ‘Virtually Voiceless’

   When literary critic Lionel Trilling wrote in 1950 that liberalism was “not only the dominant but even the sole intellectual tradition” in the United States, he meant it as a lament. He noted that while some conservative opposition to liberal thought did exist, its proponents remained inarticulate and could “express themselves” only through “irritable mental gestures.” He also wrote of the fear that liberalism would grow flat and flaccid without a worthy intellectual sparring partner to keep it fresh.

  Liberals today face an even graver situation, as conservatism threatens to run off the rails of reality entirely, and liberalism is thus once again in danger of having no real intellectual opposition to force internal questioning or truth seeking about what works and what does not in the present political era.